Please check the web site or call the Center for a complete current schedule.
Partially:
Tuesday and Thursday mornings 6-7.30 sitting with interviews with Sandy available.
Thursday evenings 7-9 chanting, sitting, interviews, and Dharma talks.
Sunday mornings 10-12 chanting, sitting, interviews, and Dharma talks followed by tea.
The Dharma talks are currently on the Mummonkan.
There are several retreats to be led by Sandy scheduled for the fall:
September 11-14 at Brooks Branch. The fee will be $75 plus dana for the teacher. Contact the Center.
October 17-19 in Nashville, TN. Contact natbrown@comcast.net or Lisa Ernst at 1240 Mary Helen Dr., Nashville, TN 37220
November 13-16 in New Hampshire. Contact Allyn Field at moccia-field@valley.net or Chas Meyers, P.O.Box 60 Cornish Flat, NH 03746 for information.

Joan Benfield Berman, September 3, 1946 - May 10, 2003

On June 22, a memorial service for Joan Benfield Berman led by both Bill Stephens, Osho of the Blue Ridge Zen Group, and Sandy,was held in the new garden which Joan had requested her family install in her memory at the Zen Center. Joan's daughter, Laura
Studdard, designed the garden.
Joan sat with us from time to time at Squirrel Mountain and at Flattop Zendo. While she was teaching Sanskrit at the University of Virginia, she kept a part-time apartment at the Blue Ridge Zen Group's zendo in Charlottesville, participating in the sangha there. She and her husband Mike, lived in Crewe, Virginia. When they were living in Richmond she helped start a Buddhist group there. Many people from the University, from Charlottesville, and from Richmond attended her service. Others came from as far away as Hawaii. Truly we loved her.
And she loved cats .In addition to trees and shrubbery, the garden includes a statue of a cat and a cat decorates her memorial stone.
Joan was devoted to Zen practice. She described her first "Zen" experience:
It was the time I went with my father to the fall meeting of the
Atlanta Manuscript Club. I was 11 or 12 and the setting was a cabin on
a lake with trees all around. The poetry was boring and no other kids
were present, so I wandered off alone down by the lake. The afternoon
sun was deep golden as were the leaves on all the trees. I started to
watch the sunlight trickling down through the leaves, reflecting the
vibrant, golden color onto the lake. Suddenly, there was nothing but
the golden color and it swallowed me up. Just for a second I didn't
exist apart from the golden light, and the feeling was euphoric. As
soon as I acknowledged what had happened, I was separate again, with a
deep sense of having lost something profound. It never happened again,
and I didn't know anything about Zen.

There is a secluded cottage in the woods for rent off Ironwood near the zendo. 2 bedrooms. 2 baths. $850/month. For more information call Jim Cameron or Kathleen Jardine at 542-4251

Recent donors are: Michael Berman, Kalo Baron, Jennifer Armstrong, Melody
Ivins, Roxanne Henderson, John Iler, Woody Setzer, John Baugh, Mark Bryant, Tim
Sussman, Carol Allen, Dennis Lennox, Katherine Hall, Walter Pharr, Bill Stephens, Terence and Brenda
Gooley, Harold Younger, Charles Schultz, and John Conner Ware. Thanks to Melody Ivins for the iris and to Tom Dow for planting them. Thanks also to Linda Campany for the rich sounding new chanting bell and to Barbara Gordon for the new garden cart, and to Jason Dowdle and Bill Stephens for their most recent work on the web site.